The most important thing I want to say is thanks for being such a great company and community. My orders have been taken, product has arrived, videos have been watched, questions have been answered by watching videos and reading the forum. It’s truly comforting and we now have great bread…
So, my daughter loves sourdough. Ordered my sourdough starter and have made two loaves so far. Additional equipment will arrive today that will make our bread baking easier but this is what I can do with what I have on hand
1st loaf - Starter and dough too wet (DD Feedback: Did you slit it? It’s not sour enough, DH Feedback - it tastes great, said with a note of incredulity…)
2nd loaf - Thickened starter, increased flour to water ratio of dough… (peanut gallery has not yet weighed in but I think it looks and tastes better…)
Questions
What should the interior texture be? Big air pockets like I have in the second loaf? or smaller more dense?
I am moving to a long loaf proofer and pan. What volume or weight is most appropriate for this size basket?
Is the bakers’ gallery the right place for these questions or should a repost (or first post) these questions in the baking technique forum?
Those look great. Second one has better “oven spring” - nice adjustments.
Q1: I think the answer to this question should be another question: what do you want the interior (called “crumb” in bread baker parlance) texture to be? A lot of people like big air pockets - it’s something of a fashion, but also something of an indication that you have gotten several things right in the process of creating the loaf.
Q2: which “long loaf proofer and pan”? Most of the gear that is commonly sold is looking for bread recipes that are in the vicinity of 500g - 600g of dry flour. I am usually baking in this clay baker from breadtopia:
…and I usually build loaves with 600g of dry flour.
My current dry flour weight is 560 g. I bought the “Artisan Bread Starter Kit – Long Loaf” which includes the Cloche Bread Baker – Oblong - inside dimension 14″ long x 5″ wide x 4 1/4″ high (area 70 in^2, volume ~ 300 in^3)
Your Breadtopia Clay Baker – Batard - inside dimension 11″ long x 7.5″ wide x 6″ high (area 82.5 in^2, volume = 495 in^3) is larger in both area and volume than what I purchased. Would you scale back or just give it a try?
My strong guess is that a 560g flour would be fine in that long clay baker. I have one like that (not the exact same one, but about the same size) and I do my normal volume of dough in there.
EDIT: I just read Melissa’s reply to you in another thread and I realize that I hadn’t taken into account that I am doing 100% whole grain and so I tend to get somewhat less oven spring than you might using white bread flour. So maybe with white bread flour, I’d scale it back to 500g or so.
